Brazil’s Bitcoin-Powered Coffee Machine

Ricardo Reis is a Brazilian entrepreneur who wanted to showcase the potential of bitcoin and to Reis, what better way to do so than with coffee?

Reis had created a bitcoin-powered coffee machine that only activates to make coffee when its linked wallet receives a certain amount of bitcoin.

This ingenious way to use the cryptocurrency was first shared on one of Facebook’s many bitcoin groups and was since shared around social media.

Using a QR code, users can send bitcoin payments to the linked wallet. The receipt of the payment will trigger the coffee machine to start making coffee.

Reis spoke with Portal do Bitcoin, a local news outlet in Brazil, and explained this innovation (roughly translated from Brazilian Portuguese):

“I created a device that powers the coffee machine with bitcoin transactions to study and to have fun. Dealing with technology, for me, besides work, is a hobby. My intention was not to create something to explore commercially, I wanted to simply explore the capability of the technology and show others how bitcoin is ‘programmable money’.”

While this coffee machine does not utilize the coin’s Lightning Network, Reis is planning on incorporating the tech to future creations soon.